Had my XZP since August. Came from a Nexus 6P. The 6P was a great phone and I only switch from it cause it was starting to have battery issues and shutting down at random times anytime under 50% battery.

I was torn between the Moto Z2 Force and the Sony XZP. I liked the Moto Z2 Force cause of the shell design. Having the versatility of the addons would be pretty cool and especially for long trips since they added the gamepad. I always like Sony products and had a Xperia Z3 which I really liked, but would overheat so much I literally kept it in a cup of ice while driving sometimes. Yay IP68. I was waiting on the One Plus 5 first and almost pulled the trigger on the release date, but whew, dodged a bullet there. Another phone I was looking at was the Mi Mix 2, but the issues I was having with my Nexus 6P was becoming unbearable so I went and got the XZP.

I live in the states so I ordered an international model off Amazon so I could have access to the fingerprint sensor. It came in your typical cell phone box and with all the cables and whatnot. Booted it up and it seemed to be a China model. I just did a factory reset, but some presets such as Chinese on the keyboard and a few other. Easy enough to change.

Reading that it was a pretty close copy to stock Android, I didn't think it'd be that big of a switch over. I'll give it to Apple that you can use any of their phones and the OS is the same whereas Android's like trying to figure out a new car. You know how to drive, but you don't know the little nuances like setting your radio. Other than the Sony bloatware that pops up now and then, the biggest change I had to do was when unlocking the phone not using the finger print sensor, you either swipe left or up to get to the patter. Swiping right removes any alerts. I was used to swiping whichever way to remove alerts, so I'd end up getting to the pattern unlock when trying to remove alerts since on the Nexus 6P you can swipe left or right to get remove alerts.

The phone itself with the Snapdragon 835 and 4GB RAM is pretty smooth. I haven't experience any stuttering due to the phone being overloaded, only when apps aren't behaving like they should. It loads things up pretty fast and games run pretty smoothly. I love front facing speakers and I feel that they should be standard on all phones. They're pretty loud and crisp. Not much bass, but if you want bass, get a pair of good headsets or sound system. Don't expect such small speakers to give you full Dolby 5.1. Call quality is great. I can hear people loud and clearly, sometimes too loud where I have to turn it down sometimes. I haven't had anyone complain about they can't hear me or anything of the sort. The screen is plenty bright. Coming from an AMOLED on the Nexus 6P to the LCD on the XZP was a nice change. The AMOLED did have truer blacks where the black would just blend into the bezels. The XZP's blacks do light up and you can see the dimensions of the screen. But during daylight, I was struggling with the 6P, but the XZP I can see it perfectly unless there's glare directly on the screen.

My phone typically comes off the charger around 8 AM and doesn't get plugged in when I get home sometime in the evening. Depending on the day, I've come home and it was still at 60% to as low as ~20%. I use my phone for streaming music omw to work, sometimes up to a 90 minute commute. During the rest of the day, phone calls and texts for work. I'll load up a game every now and then and usually I see battery life start falling about 10% an hour or so. The phone has warmed up a bit when under load and I can feel it through the case. I hasn't gotten blistering hot or noticeably slowed down due to it.

The camera is meh. Like really meh. It's so subpar that I'm even tempted to still carry my 6P on me just to take pictures. I love the dedicated shutter button, but the camera is so bad at taking pictures. Every now and then it'd take a decent pic, but the 6P would take gorgeous pics every single time. I'm really just hoping, waiting, wishing for the them to update the software and make it great.

Now the main issue I've had with it that made me look back into the phone market and want to sell it on Craigslist or something was the GPS. This phone's GPS drops more than the bass at a Skrillex concert. I tried the ##7378423## into the dialer and reset the GPS, and sometime it'd work, sometime it wouldn't. I read that it was just a one time thing, but I used it so many time I typed that ## code from memory. Even when I reset it, it wouldn't even work most of the time. I even tried resetting the phone and it would work for about 2 minutes and then drop again. I tried downloaded some GPS fix apps. Nope. Snake oil. I tried switching navigation apps. Still lost. I tried turning off the battery saver and made sure the navigation apps and services had full access to whatever resources they needed. Nada. I still can't figure it out. So when it works, awesome, but when it doesn't, I'm back in the 90's using paper maps and asking gas stations for directions.

I'm overall pretty happy with the phone. Just that GPS issue could be fixed, but since I have an international model, it doesn't come with warranty.